Sandra

I'm Free. I'm finally Free. My full review can be found on my blog but:

I didn't bother borrowing or buying the physical book for this. Instead, I chose the audiobook version because I wanted to abuse the heck out of the increase reading speed option. To finish this book faster in the estimated 15~ hours, I put the speed to 2.8x and just did other brain-empty tasks while listening like taking my dog out for a walk.

I have some very mixed-feelings for this book. I did go into reading this with the expectations that it would be a badly written, total sausage-fest, nostalgic-filled trip down the 80s and the pop culture scene back then. In some ways, I wasn't wrong, but I wasn't entirely correct either.

Though I did and will continue to describe this book to other people as a Wikipedia vomit of words and fun-facts, it isn't presented in a way that will bore you to tears. I wasn't alive when most of these references entered pop-culture, so a lot of it flew over my head. Cline does a good job in summarizing the most important pertinent parts, so you can still root for Wade and his cohorts. Another good thing I liked, sorta, was that Artemis, our leading lady, wasn't entirely dependent on Wade to get things done. There were portions of the book of which she was the first to figure out something before Aich (no idea how to spell their name) or Wade did. That was nice. I also think that the quest itself was fun, and despite how lackluster the worldbuilding was, I liked to entertain the idea of a VR world that can show you sights you'd never see in the real world.

Now, for the things I didn't quite like, especially as I think about the sequel (of which I won't be reading lol) and what happened in that book.

I'd like to get the biggest elephant in the room out of the way. Why did Halliday exactly create this quest? To show that you need camaraderie, real-life friendships (even if you've only met them online), to solve the hardest obstacles in life? Perhaps. We get hinted that this was a sort of theme as Wade admitted to needing his friends' help instead of just relying on himself as he had ever since his parents died on him. Another instance is that Halliday pulled a Snape and was in love with his only female friend and was immensely jealous of her ending up with his best friend. This caused him to shun the outside world and shun the only important relationships he had in his life (like Wade he didn't have a great family dynamic). In a really creepy way, he put her D&D name as the password to his office computer because in the 15+ years, he never truly got over her. Maybe it's because he was a shut-in that he never ventured out to move on, but I'm just talking out of my ass here, surely.

We are also told that there's a huge big button that shuts down the Oasis and deletes everything. The last line of the book has Wade admit that for the first time, he cared about reality more than the Oasis. We even get a conversation between Samantha (Artemis) and Wade (Percival) that they would use the money to make Earth a better place to live rather than escaping off into the stars to search for another plane to live on. Because, if they brought the Oasis with them, then that planet would literally be the same as Earth present-time.

I'm writing all this down, because several segments of the book shows how bad trying to escape from reality is, but then the sequel has Wade walking back on his promises to Samantha and ultimately being proven right that it's better to get off the planet. I don't understand how Cline would do a complete 180...like seriously, for what is it even for?

I had a lot of other problems as well, the weird virtual sex thing (masturbation is essential to human survivability idk) and Wade's weird obsession with Artemis. Not to mention his insistence on referring to Aich as “he/him” despite knowing that they were a Black woman in real life?? Who only created a white male avatar out of necessity from racism and sexism? I couldn't NOT groan at this. I also don't want to get into Daito and Shoto. I don't. It's too cringe. Also it was REALLY weird that he basically doxxed his crush!! It's weird! I don't care that Artemis was ok with it in the end because it was for “her safety”.

Super side note: the way Cline bent over BACKWARDS to make every character in this book heterosexual or completely off-limits as someone of the opposite sex except for Artemis is, laughable.

Final rating: 2/5 (I didn't completely hate the quest. It was honestly the best part of the book when they went on the scavenger hunt and solved puzzles. Everything else? Boo.)